Page 25 of The Light Year (Stardust Beach #6)

bill

. . .

The holiday music comes to him as if through a long tunnel. Bill is sitting at a round table in the hangar at NASA, watching the children run around excitedly as their parents mingle and drink in their semi-formal evening wear.

Normally, NASA does a big Christmas or New Year’s party for adults only, but this year it’s more like an amusement park, with kids of all ages there to see Santa Claus, eat the hamburgers being delivered to tables by waitstaff in black pants and white shirts, and dance to the band on the small raised stage as they play jazzy renditions of “Let It Snow” and “Jingle Bell Rock.”

“Could you look any more glum?” Todd Roman stops next to Bill’s chair, smoking a cigarette as he watches his three boys race around the dance floor.

“What are we doing?” Bill looks up at Todd, waving a hand to blow the cigarette smoke in another direction. “This is mayhem.”

Todd shrugs. “We’re doing a family event to show that we enjoy our wives and children.” He watches with a smile as a girl of about ten or eleven picks up her younger brother and carries him piggyback-style to meet Santa.

“It looks like we’re raising a generation of heathens,” Bill says. “Do none of them have party manners?”

At this, Todd guffaws and pulls out a chair. He sits and reaches for the ashtray at the center of the table, tapping his ash into it. “Okay, Booker. What’s eating you?”

Bill puts his elbows on the table. “Nothing. I’m just in a terrible mood.”

Todd makes a faux shocked face and then shakes his head. “You don’t say.”

It occurs to Bill—briefly—that Todd might have concerns or problems of his own, but nothing in the way he acts at work ever lets on that the man has a dark side.

For all Bill knows, Todd rests his head on his pillow at night with a smile on his face, drifting off to sleep with a perfectly contented wife at his side, and children, who he feels like he never lets down, slumbering peacefully down the hall.

Bill sighs. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring down the mood.” He forces himself to sit up straighter. He reaches for the vodka tonic on the table and takes a swig. “I’ve had a rough year.”

Todd bursts out laughing at this. “You know,” he says.

“I try to watch my language, especially when children are present, but no shit, Bill,” he says.

The volume of his voice drops as he grows serious.

“I know you’ve had a bad year. You know why?

Because I have, too. You weren’t alone up there.

I was there with you, spinning and feeling like our numbers had been called,” Todd says, holding the hand with the cigarette between his fingers up to the sky as he keeps his eyes on Bill’s face.

“You’re not the only one who stared death in the face and then came back to Earth to smile and act like nothing happened. You do know that, right?”

Bill blinks at him a few times. “Sure. I know that,” he says, mildly chagrined.

“I understand that you lost your temper and punched my wife’s brother at the New Year’s party.

I know you got shipped off to therapy and had to spill your guts to some lady shrink.

” Todd’s voice is even and it sounds edgier than Bill has ever heard it sound.

“And whatever the hell has been going on with you and Jeanie Florence isn’t exactly top secret.

” Todd puts his cigarette to his lips and takes a long pull on it, then exhales smoke up towards the ceiling as he narrows his eyes at Bill. “But tell me more about you.”

Bill’s face goes slack and heat creeps up his neck. Just the mention of Jeanie is enough to push his buttons, so he makes an effort to close his mouth, to neutralize his features, and to change the subject.

“You’re calling me an ass,” Bill finally says, a smirk tugging at his mouth. “And I deserve that.” He nods at Todd’s cigarette. “You got another one of those?”

Todd pulls the pack and his lighter from the breast pocket of his jacket and sets them on the table with a loud thump . There’s no way he’s lighting Bill’s cigarette, so he looks at the band on the stage and at the gleeful children as Bill pulls one from the pack and flicks the lighter.

Once Bill has done a full inhale and exhale, he speaks again: “Tell me about you, Roman. I want to hear how your year has been—other than the obvious.”

Todd sits back in the chair and cocks an eyebrow at Bill. “You’re asking me to tell you my troubles so that yours sound smaller? Or maybe misery just wants company?”

“Sure,” Bill allows. “Maybe both. What do you have?”

Todd crosses one leg over the other and looks up at the extremely high ceiling of the hangar. “Well,” he says, thinking about it. “First of all, my year started with you punching my brother-in-law at a work party, and I had to deal with the fallout from that. My wife was not pleased.”

Bill makes a hmph sound, but doesn’t apologize for punching Ted Mackey.

“Next, I waited on pins and needles to see if I’d get chosen for the docking mission, and when I did, I had to deal with how it felt to beat out Vance, who is arguably my best friend at NASA.

We always know that’s a chance, that we’ll knock a buddy off a mission, but it still doesn’t feel good, and then you’ve got all the inferiority stuff that plays in your brain.

” Todd circles a hand in the air as he talks, cigarette smoke wafting upwards as he does.

“So I went up to space, excited as all hell, and nearly died. Came back feeling like I was on a boat that was constantly pitching and rolling. That went on for a couple of months, so thanks for asking,” Todd says curtly, grinding his cigarette into the ashtray and then sitting back to look right at Bill.

“Saw some doctors, lost some time at work, ended up looking like a jackass who can’t handle space. ”

“Oh, come on,” Bill says, ready to argue this point. “That could have happened to anyone.”

Todd holds up a hand. “But it didn’t. It happened to me, and you’re asking about me.

I did the physical therapy and somehow avoided surgery, thank god, but I still wake up some mornings feeling like I don’t have my sea legs.

No one knows that, by the way, not even Barbie,” he says, giving Bill a sharp look.

The band starts to play “Winter Wonderland.”

“I’m sorry, Todd,” Bill says sincerely. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“Well, most of us can’t see past the end of our own noses, and I would say that you’re particularly bad at it, Booker.” Todd laughs at his own joke. “The only thing you can see beyond the tip of your own schnoz is Jeanie Florence.”

Bill taps his cigarette in the ashtray as he composes himself. Hearing--yet again--from a coworker about Jeanie is making him incredibly uncomfortable. And yet, he knows he's not in a position to dispute the allegation, or even to be angry at Todd for making it.

"Jo and I have been seeing my therapist together," he says instead, surprising himself as the words come out of his mouth.

He puts the cigarette to his lips and inhales again as he narrows his eyes.

"You're a military man yourself, Roman. And now you're an astronaut.

We've been through a lot of the same things--as well as some things that don't overlap. "

As he says this, he's thinking of the daughter he and his first wife, Margaret, had lost in the middle of their pregnancy.

He's also remembering the long years of worrying that he'd done the wrong thing by committing Margaret to a mental facility and ultimately divorcing her.

He'd done as right by her as he could, given the fact that he himself was a young man then, with a whole life ahead of him, and when she'd died by her own hand, it had taken yet another toll on Bill and on his psyche.

Todd is listening; he nods, but says nothing.

"I would also be willing to bet that your life hasn't always been a bed of roses," Bill goes on.

His gold watch taps against the glass ashtray on the table and his eyes never leave Todd's face.

"There have most likely been things that have happened, or choices you've made, that have left their mark.

None of us are perfect. And none of our choices are perfect, either. "

Todd clears his throat and nods again. "Fair enough."

"But I want you to hear it from me directly: Jo and I are addressing these issues, and I'm doing my best to be the kind of man I can look at in the mirror each day.

It's not always easy, and I've done plenty of things I'm not proud of, but.

.." He pauses here, looking at the women on the dance floor with their children. "All I can say is that I'm trying."

Todd nods and taps the table lightly with his knuckles as he stands.

"That's all anyone can ask for, Bill." He stands there a moment, giving Bill a look that's somewhere between admiration and pity, and then he walks off, leaving Bill to smoke the rest of his cigarette as his eyes skim the room, searching for Jeanie Florence.

“I think your mind is somewhere else,” Jo says to Bill in Dr. Sheinbaum’s office. “Or maybe it’s your heart.”

Bill can feel the brittle tension between them as they sit on the couch, facing Dr. Sheinbaum, who is behind her desk.

“Bill?” Dr. Sheinbaum prompts, waiting for his response.

“I’ve had a hard year,” he offers as an excuse. “My mind has been all over the place. You know that, Dr. Sheinbaum.” Bill looks at his therapist, hoping she’ll corroborate this and help him move to safer ground.

Jo turns her head to him. There is hurt on her face. “Bill,” she says softly. “You can’t be married to someone for fifteen years without knowing them at least a little. And I know you a lot.”